Routinely irradiating the brains of people being treated for small-cell lung cancer improves survival, today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine reports.
Small cell cancer accounts for about 20 to 25 per cent of the lung cancer cases diagnosed each year in the United States. With conventional treatment, the average survival time ranges from 10 to 18 months.
The new results, derived from a combined analysis of seven studies involving 987 people, showed brain irradiation increases survival by 5.4 per cent.
"Even though this advantage is small, it is important," Dr Desmond Carney of the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin writes in an editorial in the Journal.
The researchers, led by Dr Anne Auperin of the Gustave-Roussy Institute in Villejuif, France, also found radiation therapy inhibited the chance that the initial lung tumour would spread to the brain.
"These results confirm that prophylactic cranial irradiation prevents and does not simply delay the emergence of brain metastases," the researchers concluded.
The findings suggest that brain irradiation should become the standard treatment for all people whose small-cell lung cancer has gone into complete remission, the researchers said. Dr Carney, in his editorial, agreed.